


Adamas

by Luna (PrincessLunaLover)



Category: Batman (Comics), Super Sons (Comics), Superman (Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Body Horror, Eye Trauma, Flamebird!Jon, Love Triangles, Multi, Unrequited Love, Violence, chris is nightwing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10096289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessLunaLover/pseuds/Luna
Summary: It's been years since the end of the Super-Sons, and things have changed. Jon has become the new Flamebird, Chris has returned as Nightwing, and Superman and Batman have retired, leaving Damian to take Batman. With the cycle of Batman and Superman broken, a new cycle begins again, one that will end both for good, or end in tragedy for everyone.





	1. Chapter 1

Damian had never been soft.

He was born, broken, he sometimes thought. Born with something wrong inside of him, born without the ability to be soft. Sometimes, he thought that it was because of his parents. Being the child of demons, on both sides of his blood. The demon al Ghul, the demon bat, the demon’s daughter. There was no escaping the blood that tainted him, no matter how hard he’d tried. Running away never did any good, and besides, he’d tried that already. Going to his father had only submerged him into a different kind of darkness, a kind that protected rather than destroyed, but a darkness nonetheless.

Damian had never been soft, but at least he had tried to not _bleed_.

He wasn’t born a killer, of course, no matter what Todd said, no matter what others might think about a boy who was born with blood on his hands, and who’d done his best to wash himself of it ever since. Sure, in the beginning, he had thought almost nothing of it, but he had grown slowly and tried to make himself something new, something that didn’t live and breathe with needles in his skin and rusted iron on his tongue. He was not soft, and he was not ever going to be soft, but he’d tried to do his best to make his very existence something that didn’t demand the lives of others to feed his own. He'd tried to not be selfish, he'd tried to be someone soft, and even if that was impossible, he'd done his best with the broken shambles that he'd been forged from in the fires of hell itself.

He saw a lot of that in other people, really--selfishness, as well as self-sacrifice. He saw people who just took lives without really caring where they came from, or why. Sometimes it was the contract killers. Sometimes it was his own family. He didn’t know. Sometimes, he found himself not caring.

That was when he was the most scared.

But Damian—he knew that he was this way, and he knew that, even when he tried, there really wasn’t much that he could do to change it. He’d come into this world covered in blood and wailing to be given time and energy and attention to survive, and that was the way that he was always going to be.

He told himself that it was normal—that all people were born a little broken, and that he was no less broken than everybody else. But that was a lie, and he knew that, deep down. Even if he were born to people who weren’t already monsters that went bump in the night, then he would have always been this way. He just now had a chance to really show it.

He knew it because of Jon.

Jon—Jon wasn’t like anybody that he had known before, and it wasn’t because he was a kryptonian hybrid, though that might have played a small part in it. Jon was…

Jon was beautiful.

In the aesthetic sense, of course, Jon was pleasing to the eye, anybody could have seen that from the start. When they were both kids, even, he was an adorable thing to look at. He had blue eyes that were deviously adept to do a puppy-dog expression at all times, he had a soft, round face, and skin that was kissed by sunshine. He was like a sun himself, really, in all ways but literal. He was a bit of a crybaby (well, more than a bit) but Jon?

Jon was soft.

There was no getting around that, and Damian honestly couldn’t have found any word better suited to Jon than simply being soft. His heart was tender and warm and open to everyone possible, and he had the passion to back up everything he said. He was quick to cry about everything, from a broken toy to not being able to help someone when they needed it, but just as quick to get angry over some injustice being delivered onto the world. Jon’s very existence roared into Damian’s life like a raging dragon—like he was some kind of angel of fire, like he was a phoenix that had been reborn from nothing, and was determined to do everything in his power to let the world know that he was there. Even when he went out, one would think, he would do it in a glorious burst of flames. As children, their missions together had ended, more often than not, with Damian either saving Jon, or Jon having to save him. Jon’s heart was always the thing to do it, and he often either utterly lost control of his powers, or he had lost them altogether when they worked-together, but Damian didn't mind, despite always protesting it. His powers, he had learned, were utterly tied to his heart, even his invulnerability, as if even his genetics had bowed to the passion that seemed to have been filled the boy completely and totally, from the very beginning.

Really, Damian shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when he had turned-out to be the Kryptonian God of legend, Flamebird.

In retrospect, he should have expected it, and he was a little disappointed in himself for not seeing it coming. He was a detective, or at least had been in-training at the time, and wasn’t a part of that seeing things that nobody else could see, even before they happened?

When Jon had first become Flamebird officially—when the goddess who burned everything to ash had possessed him, and spoken through him as her vessel—Damian had been prepared for war. They had just come back from a mission together—a small one, one that had been against just a small gang of robbers that had been causing a few disappearances in Metropolis and Gotham alike—when things had gone wrong. Jon’s small body, completely untouched beforehand, had completely become consumed by flames without warning, and he had started plummeting to the forest below. For one, single moment, everything had come to a complete stop, with Damian in a panic, swinging after him, arms outstretched, ready to catch him before he fell…

And that was when Jon sprouted wings.

Great wings of fire, wings the size of trees themselves, and at least twice as long. He had pulled himself upright, completely consumed in flames, and his eyes had burned blue and brighter than the stars themselves. His silhouette had changed, too—the flames themselves had become the shape of a bird against the dark sky, or maybe a giant dragon, illuminating the entire forest and staring down at Damian, and Damian, all of sixteen years old, had never felt smaller in his entire life.

When Jon had spoken, it wasn’t his voice at all. It was the voice of the Ancient Goddess Flamebird, echoing and doubled with might, who had greeted Damian as a friend of her vessel, looking as if she were about to say something more, staring at him with eyes eclipsed blue with fire, before the spell was broken completely, and Jon had continued his plummet to Earth, only to be caught by Damian, who was utterly numb from the whole experience.

Neither of their parents liked the discovery, as he had recalled, and Damian didn’t, either. He liked Jon the way that he was, and he didn’t want anybody, a goddess or not, interfering with that. Superman had talked about some unfamiliar kryptonian also being called Flamebird while he tried to explain to an unhappy Batman about why everything had changed for them all, someone Damian frankly didn’t care about, but the other name he dropped had caught his attention.

 _Nightwing_.

Damian remembered, then, the story that he’d been told by Grayson, about where he’d gotten his name. The legend of the Kryptonian Gods had come rushing back to him, and the people who had named themselves after them, Grayson included. The other Flamebird, the girl called Thara Ak-Var—she’d also had a Nightwing of her own: a boy called Lor-Zod, or Christopher Kent. A boy that he’d heard Jon mention in passing as his childhood imaginary friend, one that earned sad glanced from Kent and alarmed looks from Lane whenever he was mentioned around them.

Damian’s fist clenched tight.

Christopher Kent had been the one who ruined everything.

Damian _hated_ him.

It was just a month later when he’d shown up, when everything started going wrong. Both Batman and Superman had decided to retire, leaving the mantle of Superman and Batman to be filled by their heirs—by Superboy and Robin, respectively. Conner Kent had taken the mantle full-time, and Damian himself became Batman, leaving Red Robin to be Superman’s main partner instead.

Batman was officially without a Superman.

Damian didn’t mind, not really. He was fine working with Jon, just as they’d always done, just as they always _should_. Names were just names, and he didn’t mind when Jon had started using the name Flamebird, because that was what he _was_ , and as long as he was working with Damian, then it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Because they were together, like they _should_ be, and like they always _would_ be. Damian had come to rely on him, had come to think of him as someone who helped push back the brokenness, and he had thought Jon felt the same way. He thought Jon wanted him, that Jon might even _need_ him, and he'd come to _trust_ him, to think that he could trust Jon to help fix his heart...

They would have always been together, Damian had thought, if it weren’t for _him_.

That day, Damian had decided to do something special, to celebrate the fact that they were still partners, even with all of the upheavals in their lives. He had made Jon an emerald necklace, one that he thought would go perfectly with the bright red of Jon’s new costume, and the bright blue of his eyes. He’d grafted it into a heart-shaped setting, and he’d given it to Jon, while they’d stood together in the Metropolis streets. Sweeping Jon’s long hair aside, he’d fastened it around the back of his neck, and had been about to ask him if he’d be his Superman, before there was a sudden burst of _light_ and _noise_ and the sky above their heads had opened, and a boy fell right from the sky. He'd later learned that Kent managed to weaken the barrier between dimensions enough to set Nightwing free, using the Phantom Zone projector to get him out over Metropolis where it was weakest, and hell if he didn't spend every night cursing him for it.

He’d landed at Jon’s feet, staring wide-eyed at him, before immediately getting on his knees before Jon, as the tear in the sky closed behind them. A boy with red hair, blue eyes, and a blue costume that matched Jon’s red one, he’d introduced himself by the three names Damian had heard: Lor-Zod, Nightwing, and Chris Kent. Taking Jon’s hands tightly in his own, he declared that he came to find him, and that he’d be by his side forever, if Jon would have him. He was all fealty and begging, all unearned familiarity, and Damian's blood boiled at the sight, clenching his fists tight, shaking...

Flushed pink from his neck to the tips of his ears, Jon accepted immediately, and got a kiss right on his lips for his troubles—something Jon shoved him away for, and something Damian had immediately reached for a batarang for, before Chris apologized for being so forward, explained that he came from the Phantom Zone, and really was overwhelmed by all of this, and by human things, which Damian begrudgingly accepted, even while Chris held Jon's hand tight, and Jon stood there, flushing with his head bowed, dark red and smiling. This was fine, he thought. This was just another thing that they would face together, and that they would come out of together, just like everything else. There was no reason to think that this would be any different from anything else.

It was, and he lost.

Thinking back on it, he was again disappointed with himself for not seeing it. He should have seen it coming when Jon had started backing-out of their missions, with excuses of being with his family and coming back to Damian later, and when Jon had started spending more and more time around Kent. Nightwing and Flamebird soon became heading heroes of Metropolis, a new duo that brought Metropolis right back into an age of growth and renewal. No longer were Superboy and Robin together, no longer were Superman and Batman, and instead he was cut-off completely. Superman, Nightwing, Flamebird, Power-Woman, Superwoman, and the Supergirls were all the headlining heroes of Metropolis, and no matter how hard he tried to squeeze back in, Damian just simply did not fit in that picture.

Batman belonged in Gotham. Batman belonged in the dark, away from the rest, out of the sun. Batman could never slip into the skylights of Metropolis, and there was no place for a demon of the darkness in the city of the sun.

In the darkness, then, he would stay.

Cycles, as he learned, were meant to be broken. There was no such thing as forever, and that included this. Nothing ever lasted forever, and he should have expected that, especially when it was something as good as Jon.

It was around that time that he had started hearing voices.

When they were younger, Jon had told him about all of the voices that he had heard, voices that reached from the dark and tried to pull him in. An angel with fiery wings, a boy who lived on the other side of the mirror, and a boy also named Jon who shifted from a boy his age into a man all talked to him. One called himself his twin, one called herself Linda, one called himself Chris, and promised that one day, he’d get out, and Jon wouldn’t be alone anymore. All of the voices were nice to Jon, and he’d called them all his imaginary friends, even when he’d grown way, way too old to have such childish things in his head any longer.

The voices that talked to Damian weren’t so nice.

They were violent, evil things. Things that crawled in his hear and down his throat, voices that whispered over and over again how unfair it was, how awful it was that he’d been left alone, even after Jon had promised that they would be together forever. He found himself whispering those things to himself, long after all of the lights in the cave had been shut-off, and he was left to himself, stirring in the dark, where his father and mother and grandfather had become demons in the night, where the darkness seeped into his bones and stirred within, growing ice and crystals that bubbled under his skin and boiled underneath.

His skin itched, red and irritated, and when he’d scratched at it, it started flaking off, revealing hardness and coldness underneath that he didn’t even know he’d had, but really, that was just another thing that he should have been expecting. He should have known that anybody who bore the title of the demon son long-enough would have become a demon themselves, and that it was only a matter of time before he changed to fit that label. He almost wanted to laugh at that, because it was such a typical thing to happen to him, but he didn’t, oh, he didn’t. He stayed down there, buried in the dark, as his very soul hardened into crystal and ice, and everything underneath and inside him compressed into diamond, hard and unforgiving and sharp at the edges, able to cut through flesh with the slightest twitch.

And oh, how it did. Even standing was enough to make him bleed from the inside.

He knew what he became, even before the name had come to him, even before he remembered exactly who he was supposed to be. They couldn’t take that away from him, not this time, not when he had come so far, not when his mission was almost complete.

He left that day, stocked with kryptonite, and magic. Blades of both material strapped to his back, pockets lined with the deadly meteorite. When he entered the Kents’ home, he was disgusted to find that they were sharing a bed together, and he took Jon quietly, without a single sound, a sleeping bomb laced with red kryptonite to keep them both asleep while he stole what was rightfully his in the night, disappearing long before dawn arrived.

It was the batcave that Jon would awake to, overgrown with crystal all around them. Spires of black and red, boiling sickly from within, growing from every corner of the room. From Damian’s very skin grew the same kind, breaking-through like sickly pustules, like an infectious disease that would not leave, no matter how hard he scratched. Jon tried to scream at the sight, but a gag had been stuffed in his mouth, and the chains that kept him to the floor were made of kryptonite, so he had nowhere to go, and nobody who would save him.

He was all alone, just like Damian.

Walking forward, the second Batman, the hero of the night, smiled. He finally had exactly what he wanted, and someone would finally listen to him, someone would finally understand. But only if he kept Jon here, only if he would finally stay…and he would stay, of course he would stay, because that was how they were supposed to be, that was how this all started. Long before Nightwing came-along, it was just the two of them, before he’d ruined everything, before he’d but-in, like he always did, like he did over and over again, every time they were reborn, every time this happened. But it wouldn’t happen this time, because he’d gotten smarter, because he knew how this worked, and he wouldn’t let Flamebird get away from him, she’d stay right here, and they’d finally be together, like they should have been, so long ago.

Jon managed to wriggle free, spitting out the gag, those breathtaking eyes huge with fear as Damian approached him, knife in hand.

“Damian?” He whispered, eyes tearing up with fear, and oh, how he hated that. He hated it when Flamebird looked at him like that. Why would she be afraid of him? She knew how much he loved him, how much he’d always loved her. He loved her more than anything, more than anybody, and he’d loved her enough to keep following her, over and over again, even when she kept trying to push him away. He’d loved her, he’d always loved her. He’d loved her more than their god, more than any command by Rao.

“Not anymore.” He whispered. “Vohc, the Destroyer.”

He brought the knife down, digging it into Flamebird’s eyes. Now she wouldn’t cry over him anymore. Now they could finally be together.

 _Forever_.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jon had been born from the sun.

It was something that he had known since he was younger, even without honestly realizing it. Even when he had hated getting up early in the morning to attend to work on the farm, he had always done it anyway, because he couldn’t stay still, even for a moment, when the sun was in the sky. The sun had filled him with life, with a burning energy that had twitched through his body and filled him with vitality, and before long, even as a baby, he was wriggling-around the house, having to be stopped by his mother so that she could have a single moment of rest. 

Jon was born from the sun, but he wasn’t the only one who was that way.

When he had been young, Jon had been a lonely child at best, if he was being honest. Jon had never liked being alone, but his parents were always on the run, and that had been the way that it was, even when he liked certain houses, and liked some of the farms that they had stayed-on. Growing-up, he thought that the things he saw and the voices that he heard were normal, because that was the way that it was for him. Who else did he have to talk to about this? When he saw faces in the mirror that told him stories before he went to bed, or when angels saved him from breaking his leg, or when shadows curled around him at night to keep him safe, he had nobody who would tell him that what he saw was wrong. His entire life, the shadows had protected him, and the things that he saw were things that were good to him—and that was even before he had met Chris himself, and saw what he could do. How could he ever stay away from his soulmate? How could he ever not fall in love with him, when he'd protected him his entire life?

Jon was never afraid of the dark, not until it was forced upon him.

The cold metal had dug into his eye, blinding him with pain, and ripping a scream from Jon that he wasn’t sure he could have made before then. Blinding, white-hot pain engulfed him, tearing at him, snapping him and he tried to squirm, to come free, but it wasn’t enough, none of it was enough. His back twisted, his legs violently thrashing, but all he could do was pull at his restraints, blindly thrash his body upwards and out, but his eye was gone, and he knew that it was gone, thick, red blood pouring out of his one, good eye, and that was before Damian had come in close again, the crystal knife gleaming in the low light of the room, and Jon was crying out of his one, good eye, the other one dripping thick scarlet, before the knife came down again, and Jon was backing away as far as possible against the wall, kicking-out and thrashing again, but he was too weak to move, too weak to breathe, and Damian’s smile loomed close to him, his very teeth sharp and jagged, and Jon could feel it as the knife sank into his socket, pain digging and scraping and he could feel his eye give with a disgusting, wet sound, and it was entirely dark, entirely black, and it was…

Jon slumped against the wall of the cave, limbs going lax, and he shook quietly. The tiny part of his soul that he knew was Flamebird had already given-up, and he was soon behind it. He had already stopped crying, accepting his fate, accepting the cycle before he even had a chance to fight back. Vohc had already won. Vohc had already lost.

 ** _“JON!”_** Came the scream from out in the cave, and Jon’s head shot up, recognizing the voice immediately Chris—Chris, that was Chris, he knew that was Chris. Even without seeing him, he knew Chris was there, in his stark, blue suit and red hair, and Jon twisted again, struggled again, as Damian turned to meet him, entire body sharpening with every step that Chris took.

Damian was made of crystal and broken glass, forged to hurt and to kill, he could have never protected and loved Jon the way that Nightwing could, he could have never given Jon what he deserved. He had seen it, he had seen the way that they looked at each other, the way that they had been so in love…he never could have gotten that, he never could have given them that. Jon had run away from him into the arms of Nightwing, Jon was born to give love and passion, not to hold the broken body of Vohc. He had been born to kill, he had been born to destroy, he had long since lost his purpose to create. So destroy he would.

Chris thrust out his hand, a telekinetic wall slamming out between them to shove against the wall of power that was Damian, but relying on Kryptonian power alone was not going to help him this time, if it had ever done such a thing to begin with against a Bat. Damian had become more of a beast than a boy at this point, his very eyes having gone from blue to sickly green—greener than the Lazarus Pit that his grandfather ruled—and his very skin had cracked like raw granite, spilling-forth waves upon waves of crystal that glowed themselves in the light of the cave. It was like kryptonite, almost, and it certainly reacted that way, shielding Vohc the Breaker from the blast completely, before the alien entity moved from its humanoid form to a dragon form—a form that Jon could recognize deep in his soul, even without seeing it, even without recalling it in this lifetime.

Jon lurched forward again, flaming wings ripping from his back, burning straight through his clothes, and he faced blindly in the direction of Damian, wherever he had gone, and Chris sank straight through the floor, before emerging behind Damian himself having taken the form of a dark, ink-like dragon, wrapping his tail around the crystal dragon, trying to bite down on the form with his black, oily teeth, but Damian’s body exploded with crystal, digging deep into Chris’s flesh, and the black dragon let out a roar of pain, writhing in agony, and Jon screamed with him, pulling desperately at his chains, feeling his own body become alight with flames, thrashing against the wall, even as the walls of the cave began to close-in around them, the cycle of Nightwing and Flamebird already coming to a close, taking Vohc with them every time…

_“Damian, stop!”_

It was his fault. He knew it was his fault. It didn’t have to be this way. It never had to be this way. He just couldn’t help it—not when Chris had come in with kind smiles and gentle hands, not when Chris had treated him like a prince, not when Chris had held him lax and sweet in the dark, stolen kisses in the middle of the night when he thought that nobody else was around. He had already fallen in love before he knew what was happening, and he just couldn’t fight it, not when he was born to fall in love with Nightwing, not when he had already been loved and protected by Nightwing since the day he had entered this world.

But that…was no excuse. That was no excuse. He had left Damian, he had loved him and then he had run straight into Chris’s arms without turning back, without keeping anything of their friendship past, without keeping anything of the love that they had once shared-together…without even wondering what Damian was going to tell him that day that he had been given that crystal heart he still wore around his neck…

**_“DAMIAN, STOP!”_ **

He had finally gotten himself free, ripping the chains straight from the wall, half engulfed in flames. Flying-out, he fumbled blindly for some kind of leverage, until he found himself throwing his arms around Damian’s draconic neck, pressing his face into the cold, blue-green flesh, hard as it was beautiful, as he knew it would be. He always knew that Vohc was beautiful, even when Vohc had decided to destroy them over and over again, until the end of time.

He pressed his face further in Damian’s neck, ignoring his own trembling, and ignoring the trembling of the other boy, or the ink dragon that had wrapped itself entirely around him. Damian lashed-out again, crystals stabbing down from the ceiling and from every corner of his body, but Jon only held-down tighter, despite the crystals stabbing into every inch of his flesh and bone.

_Jon had been born from the sun._

A goddess by the name of Flamebird had been his first name, a beautiful, flaming dragon that had engulfed the world in her fire, had destroyed the creations Vohc had built, while Nightwing guarded the night. Loving both of his fellow deities, Vohc did not want them to be lonely while he created, so he crafted a bridge between them, while he went to work building his own heart, a tender and beautiful thing that he had been missing for so long, a thing that was dedicated to his love for not only his planet and his god, but for Nightwing and Flamebird, whom he loved equally, but in different ways…

Flamebird didn’t know, she could have never known that Vohc had fallen in love with her. She had fallen in love almost instantly with her Nightwing, finding comfort and serenity in his beautiful night, while he found burning brightness and passion in her flames. She had loved him completely and wholly, and had left Vohc alone, until Rao had commanded her to destroy Vohc’s heart. At first, she had protested, believing that it was not right to always take away what Vohc created, even when Rao said that it had been something that would only inspire him to build greater and more beautiful things, but she could never fight her god, so all she could do was bow her head and fly out as he had commanded, burning Vohc’s beautiful, kind heart—so much of it painfully dedicated to her—to the ground, to ash. When she had seen his heart burned into nothing, she had wept for her actions, but she had been assured that it was all for the best, and that all they could do was wait for Vohc to build his heart again, even greater and more beautiful than it had been before.

It never came.

Vohc only grew colder, in the absence of his heart in the absence of his love. Without passion to guide him, without the night to protect and soothe him. Vohc was alone, with every beautiful thing he made burned to ash before his very eyes, in a constant cycle of destruction and rebirth.

_And Flamebird let him stay alone._

And Jon left Damian’s side.

And the friend who he led to his true love completely forgot him.

“I’m sorry, Damian, I’m so sorry.” Jon whispered, burying his face in the draconic neck, and as if spurred from a shared reverie, the dragon thrashed, snapping its head back, even Chris bit down on his flesh again, earning a roar from Damian. He couldn’t take this anymore, he couldn’t take their fighting, he couldn’t take knowing it was his fault.

 He screamed, bursting into flames, blindly searching for their souls, points of light and darkness he could feel with his heart, seeking and reaching and pushing them apart, past the crystal caverns and slamming either dragon away, far on either side of him. Jon was shaking, his skin alight with flames, sightlessly looking in any direction that he could to sense them, to know they were there. Damian and Chris…he just couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take knowing they were once friends, knowing they had once loved each other so much that Vohc had built a bridge for him, just so Nightwing wouldn’t be alone in the dark.

“It’s my fault.” He says, lower lip shaking, immediately turning his face in the direction that he could feel Damian in, even without seeing where he stood. He knew Damian’s heart, he could feel it as much as his own, he could have found Damian at the ends of the Earth. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry, I-I should have known, I should have been able to tell, I should have never left you all alone.”

Chris, by this point, had shifted back into human form, and Jon could hear the light footsteps of the older boy, walking towards him. Chris’s darkness was comforting, it always had been. It had never been anything like the sharp, painful sunstone Damian was made of, fragmented and crystal and stabbing into him from all sides. Chris was a steady back, and gentle hands, and he was nothing like what Damian was. Chris was home, kindness, comfort, and Damian was deep, primal love—love that Jon had felt in his first whirlwinds of romance, but he had been swept-away in the kind love that he had also always wanted.

He stepped closer, holding out his hand cautiously, blindly in the dark. The rivers of blood below his dark eyes had dried, caked in dirt and filth on his cheeks, and Jon’s legs felt as if they were going to give out at any moment, but he could feel Chris’s hand on his elbow, attempting to stop him, and he jerked forward anyway, running past the warning touch, until he was at the side of the shaking dragon, cradling the face in his hands, trying to touch and be close as much as he could.

Damian attacked, of course, but he was expecting that. The lashing tail against his body, the crystals that burst from his skin and impaled the kryptonian, but he just gritted his teeth and allowed himself to be hurt. Damian wasn’t like Chris, and he was never going to be like Chris, but that didn’t mean he loved him any less. Even when Chris gave a cry of alarm and rushed to be by his side, Jon only threw up another wall of flames, protecting not only Chris from Damian, but Damian himself.

“I’m sorry.” Jon apologized again, fingers curling closer into his scales, while he could feel Damian’s body shaking under him. “I didn’t forget you, but I should have been there. I should have known how you felt. I should have taken care of you, too. I shouldn’t have been so selfish.”

He could feel Damian changing under his touch, scales and crystals falling from his skin, but he still hurt, he could still feel how much it was hurting him, and it was obvious to Jon that it was just Damian hurting everybody else while he fell-apart. Reaching into his shirt, he pulled-out the green, crystal heart, and with shaking hands he put it in Damian’s own, his entire body trembling just as much as he could feel in the other boy.

“Don’t you see?” He whispered. “I still loved you. I’ve always loved you. You and Nightwing were friends, too. Don’t you remember? We don’t have to keep doing this. I still love you both.”

“You forgot me.” Damian’s voice was wavering, crackling, and Jon could feel the crystals moving under his feet again, but he pressed his face into Damian’s neck, dragging Damian’s hands closer, up against his heart.

“I never…I never forgot how much I love you. All this time, I’ve always loved you. I just have to show it. I have to show you.”

Damian’s face moved again, and Jon could tell by the silence passing between them that he was looking at Chris.

“We don’t have to fight anymore.” Chris said, voice soft. “We used to be friends. We can be friends again.”

It was only then that Damian finally started to cry, collapsing completely into his arms, and the crystals around them turned to dust.

And the cycles—both of them—were broken.

* * *

Six months later, Jon lay stretched out between his two dragons, the both of them. Damian was absently sharpening one of his blades, while Chris was toying with one of the strange, kryptonese devices that he carried on him sometimes, the things Jon could never figure out, even if he wanted to.

Reaching-up, feeling in the mood for a little attention, Jon laced his fingers with Chris's hand, and nudged Damian by his hip, just to get him to look down. Jon couldn't see him, of course, and he now wore a simple, red blindfold so that he didn't scare anybody, but he could always feel their hearts, and he could feel when they were looking at him.

"Love you." Jon said, a smile on his lips. "Both of you."

"Love you too, Jon." Chris said with a warm smile, while Damian huffed, looking away, a small blush on his cheeks.

"Hmph, love you."

Jon laughed softly, before relaxing back against the bed, tangling-up their legs.

"Hey...can I ask a question?"

"You already did."

"You sound like dad, Chris."

_"I do not!"_

"Hush, Kent. Let him speak."

"Thank you. Well...I was thinking..." Jon chewed on his lip. "Have you ever thought about...getting married?"

There was a moment of silence, before both started at once.

"When?"

"How many guests?"

Jon giggled, and curled closer. A lot of things changed...but some things didn't.

And he wouldn't have it any other way.

 


End file.
